1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical-information management network system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, capsule endoscopes that have imaging and radio-communication functions have been developed in the field of endoscope. A capsule endoscope system has been proposed that uses such a capsule endoscope for capturing images of the inside of organs of a subject, sequentially receives the captured images with a receiving device, and sequentially displays the internal images of the subject that are received by the receiving device on an image display device, such as a workstation, so that the inside of the subject can be observed (examined).
In the capsule endoscope system, as shown in FIG. 11, patient information and examination information are manually input into a workstation a as the image display device at step S1 and then are transferred to a receiving device r at step S2. The receiving device r is detached from the workstation a and attached to a body surface of the subject. Then, the receiving device r stores as a maximum the number of images taken over an eight-hour period (about 60000 images) that are transmitted from a capsule endoscope that has been swallowed (step S3). After the capturing of images by the capsule endoscope, the receiving device r is detached from the subject and then connected to the workstation again (step S4). When a plurality of workstations exists, the receiving device r is connectable to any of the workstations. When the receiving device r is connected to, for example, a workstation b, the workstation b receives the large amount of images that have been stored in the receiving device r and performs an image observation and a diagnosis report generation.
The image display device, such as the workstation a or b, is conventionally operated as a stand-alone apparatus and does not have a function for managing the patient information (e.g., see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-61627). Therefore, for each diagnosis using a capsule endoscope, the patient information and the examination information are required to be input manually, for example, by operating a keyboard of the workstation, so that those information are transferred to the receiving device. This is troublesome.
If a medical-information management network system that includes a medical-information management server for managing diagnosis results or the like, to which image display devices are connected via a network, is constructed, the image display devices can utilize the patient information and the examination information input into and managed by the medical-information management server. This improves the usability.